In an elevator apparatus in which an elevator car is lifted or lowered between floors along a hoistway in a building to carry passengers or freight, there is a gap between the elevator car and an elevator lobby in each floor in order to facilitate lifting or lowering of the elevator car. For this reason, while the elevator car stops for landing in an elevator lobby, and an access door is opened, a gap is generated between a landing-side door sill and a car-side door sill. This door sill gap is dangerous because it may cause tumbling of a passenger or falling of a wheelchair or cart wheel. Furthermore, small personal items such as a key or a card may fall into a pit through the door sill gap, and it would be difficult to recover such a small item in some cases.
In this regard, a seal member for sealing a door sill gap has been proposed in the prior art to seal the door sill gap whenever the door is opened (for example, see JP 2009-286504 A).
In the technique of the prior art, a blocker (seal member) for sealing the door sill gap is provided on the bottom of the car platform in order to prevent a personal item from falling into a hoistway through the door sill gap by sealing the door sill gap whenever the elevator door is opened. Specifically, the blocker is housed in a blocker housing formed under the car-side door sill during a travel of the elevator car. However, the blocker is stretched using an actuator such as an electric motor to seal the door sill gap when the elevator car is landed, and the door is opened.
In this technique of the prior art, a relatively expensive actuator such as an electric motor is indispensable as described above. In addition, a sensor or a control circuit for operating the actuator at a predetermined timing is necessary. For this reason, the configuration becomes complicated, and this may generate a failure and increase cost.
In view of the aforementioned problems, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an elevator apparatus capable of sealing a gap between a landing-side door sill and a car-side door sill using a link mechanism mechanically operated in synchronization with a door open/close operation so as to obtain a mechanically driven reliable operation at low cost without using an expensive actuator.